Gender can even be more complex in some languages than others. While to
the best of my knowledge, Romance languages do not have a concept of
numbers matching gender with the object they are modifying, at least
Hebrew (and possibly other Semitic languages) do have this concept. So
if I say the "7 cars" versus "7 speakers", it comes out different -
"shevA michoniyot" versus "shivAh ramkolim".
Additionally, some languages might handle the order of quantity to
object differently based upon the amount. Again, citing an example from
Hebrew, if you say "1 speaker" the order is reversed - "ramkol eHad" (if
you catch it, "ramkol" means "speaker" as in the one hooked up to your
stereo).
--
Yossi Neiman
Cartis Solutions, Inc. - http://www.cartissolutions.com
Peter Nixon wrote:
<snip snip>
> Unfortunately that is not the only issue however. Turkish for example (the
> only language other than English that I am close to fluent in at present)
> has no concept of gender. (You don't specify someone as "he" or "she",
> simply as "that"). On the other hand French has a gender for every object,
> not just living things! The structure of pronouncing numbers also varies of
> course... Do you pronounce "13" as "thirteen" or as "ten three". What
> about "113" and "1113"? (Actually English probably has the most insane rules
> for pronouncing numbers of all the languages I have come across) Many
> languages also (Turkish included) require that both pronunciation and/or
> spelling be changed depending on the preceeding or following word to make
> the pronunciation more "musical" or smoother. ("K" gets changed to "soft G"
> for example to avoid "harshness" in the middle of a sentence).
>> All of these little difference can crop up in surprisingly short, simple
> phrases making the job of such an API more complex that you might initially
> imagine :-)
>> Cheers
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------